Disability And Difference In Global Contexts

"This book explores the possibilities and limitations re-theorizing disability using historical materialism in the interdisciplinary contexts of social theory, cultural studies, social and education policy, feminist ethics, and theories of citizenship"--

This book explores the possibilities and limitations re-theorizing disability using historical materialism in the interdisciplinary contexts of social theory, cultural studies, social and education policy, feminist ethics, and theories of citizenship.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has facilitated the understanding that disability is both a human rights and development issue. In order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, the focus on disability inclusion has become increasingly important in the discourse of international and national efforts for "leaving no one behind", the motto of the SDGs. This book discusses pertinent and emerging themes such as disability rights, globalization, inequalities, international cooperation and representation. Evidence which has been obtained tends to show that persons with disabilities have been disproportionately left behind without proper representation, participation and inclusion. This book critically investigates the gaps at different levels, from top to bottom, and as importantly, within the global disability movement, for the realization of global disability rights, and theorizes the intersection of disability, globalization and human rights. Empirical case studies from different countries and contexts are introduced to deepen analysis on theories of critical disability studies from a global perspective. Co-edited by a disability researcher and the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Disability, this book will be of interest to all students, academics, policy makers and practitioners working to advance the cause of disability rights around the world.

Disability and the Life Course, first published in 2001, explores the global experience of disability using a novel life course approach. The book explores how disabling societies impact on disabled people's life experiences, and highlights the ways in which disabled people have acted to take more control over their own lives. It provides a unique combination of analysis, policy issues and autobiography, offering the reader a rare opportunity to make links between the theoretical, the political and the personal in a single volume. The material is set in a truly international context, with contributions from thirteen different countries bringing together established and emerging writers, both disabled and non-disabled. The book bridges some important gaps in the existing disability literature by including issues relevant to disabled people of all ages and with different kinds of impairments and also by offering a unique analysis of the relationship between disability and generation in a changing world.

One of the greatest challenges facing modern global health is how to include the most marginalized and impoverished people in international efforts to promote social and economic development. In Disability and International Development disability rights are situated within the broader context of global health and the need for much greater inter-sector collaboration. Reports from a broad cross-section of low- and middle-income countries—locales as diverse as Zimbabwe, Bolivia, Kyrgyzstan, and Papua New Guinea—move beyond surface discussions of "what is working" and "what shows promise" to discuss political and governance contexts, the roles of disabled persons in research by outsiders, concurrent struggles (e.g., women’s or children’s rights), and instructive inroads made by community activists and national Disabled People’s Organizations. The results are provocative, and offer new lenses for viewing both the issues and the populations they affect. Each of the book’s chapters spotlights a topic as representative of the enormity and immediacy of challenges to inclusive global health, including: The impact of international human rights law on domestic law and local traditions. The effect of failed states on the lives of people with disabilities. Empowerment and advocacy: disability organizations and movements. HIV/AIDS interventions with disabled persons. Assistive technologies in low-income countries. Strategies for improving the lives of children with disabilities. Cross-disciplinary as well as cross-cultural, Disability and International Development will attract a wide audience of professionals in rehabilitation, social welfare and human rights; governmental and non-governmental organizations and disabled people’s organizations; researchers and practitioners. It will also be relevant to those working in health and welfare administration, health policy, international aid and development, and human rights. In addition, graduate students in disability studies, public and global health and international development should find this an important guide to the future of these fields.

This first-of-its kind volume spans the breadth of disability research and practice specifically focusing on the global South. Established and emerging scholars alongside advocates adopt a critical and interdisciplinary stance to probe, challenge and shift common held social understandings of disability in established discourses, epistemologies and practices, including those in prominent areas such as global health, disability studies and international development. Motivated by decolonizing approaches, contributors carefully weave the lived and embodied experiences of disabled people, families and communities through contextual, cultural, spatial, racial, economic, identity and geopolitical complexities and heterogeneities. Dispatches from Ghana, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Venezuela among many others spotlight the complex uncertainties of modern geopolitics of coloniality; emergent forms of governance including neoliberal globalization, war and conflicts; the interstices of gender, race, ethnicity, space and religion; structural barriers to redistribution and realization of rights; and processes of disability representation. This handbook examines in rigorous depth, established practices and discourses in disability including those on development, rights, policies and practices, opening a space for critical debate on hegemonic and often unquestioned terrains. Highlights of the coverage include: Critical issues in conceptualizing disability across cultures, time and space The challenges of disability models, metrics and statistics Disability, poverty and livelihoods in urban and rural contexts Disability interstices with migration, race, ethnicity, ge nder and sexuality Disabilit y, religion and customary societies and practice · The UNCRPD, disability rights orientations and instrumentalitie · Redistributive systems including budgeting, cash transfer systems and programming. · Global South–North partnerships: intercultural methodologies in disability research. This much awaited handbook provides students, academics, practitioners and policymakers with an authoritative framework for critical thinking and debate about disability, while pushing theoretical and practical frontiers in unprecedented ways.

This handbook questions, debates and subverts commonly held assumptions about disability and citizenship in the global postcolonial context. Discourses of citizenship and human rights, so elemental to strategies for addressing disability-based inequality in wealthier nations, have vastly different ramifications in societies of the Global South, where resources for development are limited, democratic processes may be uncertain, and access to education, health, transport and other key services cannot be taken for granted. In a broad range of areas relevant to disability equity and transformation, an eclectic group of contributors critically consider whether, when and how citizenship may be used as a lever of change in circumstances far removed from UN boardrooms in New York or Geneva. Debate is polyvocal, with voices from the South engaging with those from the North, disabled people with nondisabled, and activists and politicians intersecting with researchers and theoreticians. Along the way, accepted wisdoms on a host of issues in disability and international development are enriched and problematized. The volume explores what life for disabled people in low and middle income countries tells us about subjects such as identity and intersectionality, labour and the global market, family life and intimate relationships, migration, climate change, access to the digital world, participation in sport and the performing arts, and much else.

Many critical analyses of disability address important ‘macro’ concerns, but are often far removed from an interactional and micro-level focus. Written by leading scholars in the field, and containing a range of theoretical and empirical contributions from around the world, this book focuses on the taken-for-granted, mundane human activities at the heart of how social life is reproduced, and how this impacts on the lives of those with a disability, family members, and other allies. It departs from earlier accounts by making sense of how disability is lived, mobilised, and enacted in everyday lives. Although broad in focus and navigating diverse social contexts, chapters are united by a concern with foregrounding micro, mundane moments for making sense of powerful discourses, practices, affects, relations, and world-making for disabled people and their allies. Using different examples – including learning disabilities, cerebral palsy, dementia, polio, and Parkinson’s disease – contributions move beyond a simplified narrow classification of disability which creates rigid categories of existence and denies bodily variation. Disability, Normalcy, and the Everyday should be considered essential reading for disability studies students and academics, as well as professionals involved in health and social care. With contributions located within new and familiar debates around embodiment, stigma, gender, identity, inequality, care, ethics, choice, materiality, youth, and representation, this book will be of interest to academics from different disciplinary backgrounds including sociology, anthropology, humanities, public health, allied health professions, science and technology studies, social work, and social policy.